6 Michael Corner and The Lost Galleon
by ivoryglobe2
Summary: Short stories following real time in the Potterverse, following the career of Michael Corner. 6 - It is the era of Umbridge and The Order of The Phoenix. Michael joins Dumbledore's Army, but tensions destroy his relationship with Ginny.


Michael Corner and The Lost Galleon

'I totally get what you mean about the structure of the course, Professor' said Terry Boot, in his best I-will-keep-up-this-reasonable-but-persistent-approach-until you-give-me-what-I want-just-to-shut-me-up tone of voice, 'although the teacher who was teaching about dark creatures demonstrated some of them as and when he happened to find them.'

'But he was a dark creature himself,' said Professor Umbridge. 'He knew where they were.'

'He was a werewolf,' Terry agreed, 'but he taught us about werewolves without turning himself. What I was hoping you could tell us is how we could cope if we did encounter a Dark wizard, or witch.'

'There are no Dark wizards,' said Professor Umbridge.

'I mean, I totally accept that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named isn't alive,' he said. 'But what about someone like Sirius Black

'Who has said anything about Black?' she said sharply.

'The Ministry,' said Terry.

'The Ministry hasn't said anything about Black,' she said.

'That's my point, really,' said Terry. 'A couple of years ago we were all warned about him and we had those Dementors around the castle. Nothing's been said recently about him and the Ministry hasn't announced that they've caught him, so presumably he's still out there.'

'Yes, he may be still out there,' she said. 'Which means that he is not in here, so you don't need to worry about him.'

'He did break in,' I murmured, and immediately wished I hadn't.

'Hand, Mr Corner,' she said.

I put my hand up and she ignored me.

'You need have no concerns about Dark wizards, or Black ones.' She tittered winsomely, which made my teeth ache. 'Besides, in the very remote possibility that you do encounter something, you already have the knowledge at your disposal to deal with it, as you demonstrated last year, I believe, Mr Corner.'

'I'm sorry, Professor,' I said, thoroughly confused. 'What are you talking about?'

The whole class held its breath. We knew she had already taken Potter down, and she came with a bit of a reputation. Mandy Brocklehurst had written to her auntie, who worked in the Ministry, to ask what she was like. Auntie Maude had replied to the effect that Umbridge was not the brightest, but cunning and vindictive, and universally loathed. Auntie Maude had been inexplicably sacked, which proved:

That she was correct

That our mail was being opened.

'I am talking about you encounter with the monster in the Lake when it attacked one of our visitors,' she said sweetly. 'You dealt with it perfectly well using spells you already knew, didn't you?'

'She wasn't attacking,' I said. 'It was just the Squid. She wanted to join in.'

'It is still a monster,' she said.

'Yes ma'am,' I said, retreating into obscurity.

'Well, I hope they're going to adjust the exam to reflect the fact that we haven't been taught anything,' said Terry as we walked down to Potions, where it would at least be nice and cool. Umbridge's classroom was very small and obviously intended to be cosy, but it was too small for us and The Huffs together. It had been like a rather manky oven by the end of the lesson. The other lesson, with Slytherin and Griff, was probably just the same and Harry had probably been quite pleased to escape.

Terry didn't mention exams again, but the subject was clearly on his mind because he put his hand up during the very next lesson.

'Excuse me, Professor. Could I ask something about the exam prep?' he said.

As he had said 'Good morning, Professor Umbridge,' louder that anyone when she greeted us, she beamed at him and invited him to go on.

'I wondered, Professor, with the revised syllabus,' he said, 'whether the exam board was aware that we will not be practising defensive magic.'

She looked at him as though he had sprouted saxophones out of his ears.

'I'm not sure what you mean,' she said.

'I know that past exams in DADA have had a practical element,' he said. The Practical was fifty percent of the marks is what he meant. 'I thought that, if we were to stick to the Theory, we would not be able to score very well if we were having to do a Practical exam. Will the exam be adjusted to take this into account?'

She went on staring at him. I cringed inside, thinking; She's going to turn him into a ferret.

At last she said, 'I'm sure that, by focusing on the Theory you will be able to more than make up and deficiencies in the Practical.'

'Thank you, Professor,' he said. 'That's very reasonable.'

'And it means we're stuffed,' he said as we climbed the stairs to the Library.

'She's making this up as she goes along,' I said. 'It hadn't occurred to her. I bet she's sitting quill in hand as we speak, writing to the Exam Board to ask them to scrub the Practical.'

'Good luck on that,' he said. 'I know some of the Board and they're a lot crustier than she is. If she goes running to them they'll have her on toast.'

'I wasn't planning to take it as a NEWT,' said Mandy, 'so I won't have to have her again after this year.'

'They'll have got another teacher by that time,' said Tony.

'I can't believe there'll be many queuing up to take the job,' I said. 'It must have a bit of a rep by now.'

'Is that DADA?' said Ginny, who was waiting for me just outside the Library.

'Yeah. I reckon we're all going to be T,' I said. 'Umbridge isn't teaching us Practicals and they're bound to come up in the OWLs.'

'Actually, Hermione is putting together something to help with that,' said Ginny. 'As an extracurricular activity.'

'As in the Duelling Club?' said Terry. 'Like that worked, didn't it?'

'She thought she could get someone to teach us,' said Ginny. 'She was thinking of persuading Harry.'

'Harry Potter?' said Tony.

'How many other Harry's could it be?' said Ginny cooly.

Well, there's Harry Felz, and Harry Adderly in Slytherin and,' said Tony Goldstein, who liked winding her up.

'Okay, smartarse,' said Ginny. 'I know there are other Harrys, but Harry has loads of experience and special training from the Cup.'

'When's all this going to happen?' I said. 'We can't leave it till the last minute.'

'Nothing's been fixed up yet,' said Ginny. 'But she's hoping to get together in Hogsmead.'

That was a bit disappointing. 'I thought we were going to have tea at The Coffee Cauldron,' I said when we were wandering down to the Quidditch Pitch after lunch.

'I know we were,' she said. 'But learning to defend ourselves is a bit more important than cupcakes, isn't it?'

'Depends on the cupcakes,' I said.

'Oh, shut up. Mike.'

In the end we turned up mob handed at The Hogs Head. Mandy had a date with Clive Sweeting at Puddifoot's and, seeing as she had been angling for a date since the first day of term, there was no way she was not going to pass on it.

My main worry was that Potter would start this thing up and then back out. It was fairly obvious that Granger had arm-twisted him into it and he wasn't at all keen. He wasn't keen on talking about the Tournament full stop.

'Well, that's hardly surprising,' said Ginny as we strolled up to Zonko's. 'He watched Cedric being killed. He nearly got killed himself. I wouldn't want to talk about something like that.'

'I mean, he always seems so nervy,' I said.

'What do you mean, 'nervy'?'' she said sharply, letting go of my hand.

'I don't think he is,' I said. 'Nervy, I mean. I know he's sharp in the air and that, but he's really quiet. Doesn't talk to anyone much apart from your brother and Hermione.'

'And me. He talks to me. He talks to everyone in Neville. He talks to the twins.'

'That's kind of what I mean,' I said. 'Okay, he doesn't just talk to Ron and Hermione, but the fact that you can list the people he talks to on one hand kind of makes my point.'

'Six fingers?' she said.

'You know what I mean.'

She walked in silence for a moment and grabbed my hand again. 'Look,' she said earnestly. 'He stays in his comfort zone. He was really badly bullied at his Muggle school.'

'Didn't his guardians, or whatever, do anything about it?' I said. 'My school came down a ton on bullying. They have to, by law.'

'His cousin was the worst bully of all,' she said. 'And his aunt and uncle were the cheerleaders. He spends as much of the hols as he can at our place, just to get away from them. That's why we know him so well. He isn't nervy. He just doesn't trust people very easily. But he does know his stuff.'

'Yeah, okay,' I said, slightly unnerved by her intensity. 'What do you want to get at Zonko's?'

'I don't,' she said. 'I just what to check out what the twins have bought. Forewarned is forearmed, so I know what to avoid.'

The next day we woke up to find the notorious Educational Decree 24 plastered all over the noticeboard. I couldn't believe my eyes.

'I didn't think that what we were doing was illegal,' I muttered to Terry. I reckoned it wasn't a good idea to talk too loud.

'It wasn't,' he said. 'But it was covert. Anyway. It's illegal now. We'll have to ask what Granger is planning to do next.'

'We'll catch them at breakfast,' I said. 'I'll have a word with Ginny and see if they've got any plans.'

But all I got from Ginny was a flea in my ear, which left me feeling more than a bit annoyed. I mean, it's not as if I hadn't come over to the Griff table before to talk to her though, I have to admit, Terry didn't usually come too.

It soon became clear that this was not directed at us, which was a relief. It was directed very specifically at Potter. He had crossed Umbridge big time. We all knew that he had been summoned before The Wizengamot, because Snakeo told everyone who would listen that he was as guilty as hell and had been acquitted on a technicality. But we didn't know exactly what he was guilty of. Snakeo said he had ben showing off and summoned a Patronus, but he wouldn't have been acquitted if that was the whole story. And it wouldn't explain why Umbridge loathed him so much, though I could quite understand why he loathed her. She never failed to smack him down whenever she was given the opportunity and he never failed to give her the opportunity.

He was certainly on a short fuse and I witnessed one meltdown when Snakeo made some fatuous comment about the size of Granger's teeth. Potter dyed his hair an orange and purple tartan. It was actually quite a neat piece of magic and everyone other than Malfoy thought it was very funny.

'There you go, Draco' said Weasley. 'You can call yourself MacFoy.'

'I will not have you insult my name,' hissed Snakeo (see what I did, there). He had gone even paler than usual, which made the tartan look even more garish, but then his eyes lit up as Umbridge walked round the corner. 'Sir! Sir! Look what Potter's done to my hair!'

Any other teacher would have told him to grow some balls and deal with it himself, but Umbridge smiled in delight as soon as Potter was mentioned and reminded Harry that fighting was illegal.

'We were not fighting,' Potter told her. His teeth clamped so hard it was difficult to work out what he was saying. 'I didn't think we were breaking any rules.'

'I think you will find that it is I who decides on the rules,' she said sweetly.

'Is that why we never know what the rules are?' he said, which I thought was reasonable. What surprised me was the way Potter turned completely white and clutched his hand when he gave him two detentions for cheek.

It was the next day that day that Ginny muttered 'We've found a room to practice,' as we strolled down to lunch.

'You have?' I said 'Cool! Where and when.'

'It's opposite the ballet dancing trolls,' she said. 'You know the corridor?

I thought for a moment, trying to visualise it. 'But it's just a blank wall,' I said. 'If I've got the right tapestry.'

'It is usually,' she said. 'The door only appears if you really want it to.'

And that was the first I heard about The Room of Requirements. Not only would it only appear if you really needed it. You couldn't even know about it unless you really needed it. If you didn't need it you forgot about it until you needed it again, so the secret of it never leaked out.

I needn't have worried about Harry's teaching ability. He was better than some of the teachers. He certainly helped me enormously. He was the first person to make the connection between confidence, even mood, and the ability to cast spells. None of the teachers had ever mentioned it, but they must have known about it. I remembered how my results had improved in my third year, after my chat with Lupin. It also made sense that Neville Longbottom took so long to develop and became so strong in the end, but I think it was Harry who gave him the confidence to start developing.

He even got us casting Patronuses, or is that Patroni? I love my squirrel and I call him Nuts. Nuts manages, somehow, to convey the fact that he disapproves of the name and would prefer to be called Sebastian.

Harry continued with his low-level warfare against Professor Umbridge and we were all very worried that we would somehow be associated with him through the DA and attract a share of her malice. Then she banned him from Quidditch for life, which was so obviously disproportionate that no-one, other than the Slytherins, had any respect for her afterwards. Fear, perhaps, but not respect. And a sensible resolution to keep our heads down, which is something that Harry just could not do.

The Ravens were quietly relieved that he wouldn't be playing us. Cho wasn't a bad Seeker but everyone knew that:

He was a better Seeker than she was;

They were sort of an item; and

Her confidence was pretty low. She had real difficulty casting her Patronus and struggled with a lot of spells. She was a year above me so the DA was the first time I had seen her in action, and it wasn't very confidence inspiring.

So having Harry out of the picture was something of a relief.

Everything was on hold as we went home for Christmas, but Christmas that year was difficult. Dad was going through one of his anti-magic phases and Mum was pretty fed up. She doesn't even use magic very much but he was still snippy about it. Even Christmas Day had its argument and, one way and another, it was good to get back to school.

Even there, things were a little tense, mostly because some of the teachers were on probation and they passed their tension onto us. It was a relief when my charmed galleon glowed warm in my pocket to announce the next DA sessions, or when Ginny and I could just hang out. Sometimes we were with her friends, sometimes with mine though never, with the Ravenclaw v Gryffindor match in prospect, both together.

Then Ginny announced that she had been selected as the replacement Seeker and everything started to implode.

At first it was low key. Everyone knew we were seeing each other and there were snide little comments, which I ignored. Then these escalated into suggestions that I knobble her, which I found it harder to ignore, and culminated in a shouting match with Davis where he questioned my loyalty to Ravenclaw. He came up to me later and, rather stiffly, apologised. I concluded that word had reached The Proflet who, in turn, had had a word with Davis.

But it made me feel very uncomfortable. All the time I was expecting someone to come up and have a go at me. Every time I saw Ginny I had to nerve myself to be seen with her, which she noticed.

'You don't have to go out with me,' she said one day. 'You're like a kneazle on a nailbed these days.'

'I like going out with you,' I said. 'People are just toads.'

'Ignore them,' she said blithely. 'They're just idiots. They're jealous.'

'I know they're idiots,' I said, ignoring the last bit. 'And I do ignore them, but it's very tiring, ignoring them.'

'Don't worry,' she said. 'It'll soon be over.'

How very prophetic.

The match day started with the arrival of Ione, my mother's owl, with a letter. It said that, unfortunately, things had become so difficult at home that she and Dad had agreed to a trial separation. It didn't say anything else. This was followed by a second owl from Hogsmeade Post Office, with a letter from Dad with pretty much the same information. Getting two owls in a day, when I don't normally get one, got me a few looks. I tried to keep my face bland, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

I wanted to go for a walk around the grounds, but that wasn't an option on a match day. I was swept out by the crowd, weathering a number of snide remarks on the way down to the pitch when all I really wanted to do was run and scream.

The match was agonising to watch, though I thought it would be worse if I didn't. Every time Gryffindor had the quaffle people were shouting in my ear. Every time the snitch was spotted they were shouting in my other ear. I wanted Mum and Dad to sort things out and get back together. I wanted Ravenclaw to win but Ginny to get the snitch, after all, the Irish and Krum had managed it. Unfortunately, the chasers were too evenly matched.

Then Ginny pulled off an amazing manoeuvre: she and Cho spotted the snitch by our rings just as Clover swatted a Bludger at her. Cho was well ahead, but Ginny caught the Bludger and swung around, almost balletically, to hurl it straight at Cho. It hit Cho on the shoulder and she missed the snitch, overshooting it, so Ginny was able to catch it just before Cho could get back to it. It was an unbelievable bit of skill but it was also, unfortunately, completely illegal. The rules state that;

_While any player may move or take steps to avoid a Bludger, only Beaters are permitted to make actions to redirect them._

Hootch didn't see her because she was sorting out a collision between Chambers and Spinnett and, as Dad says, 'What the ref don't see the ref don't know'.

I didn't see Ginny again that day, which was just as well because she was a high as a porligan, by all accounts. I didn't see her until the following afternoon, by which time she had calmed down a bit.

She bounced up to me and the first thing she said was, 'Did you see it?'

'Yes,' I said. 'It was fantastic.'

'It was, wasn't it?' she beamed.

'It was also a foul move,' I said.

'So what?' she said. 'I got it, didn't I?'

'Yes, but illegally.'

'Hootch didn't think so,' she said.

'Hootch didn't see,' I said. 'She was sorting out Pete and Alicia.'

'So it doesn't matter. We won.' She gave a little skip.

'Yes, but illegally,' I said. I was starting to feel the tension rising.

'That's a problem for you?' she said, suddenly icy cold.

'A bit,' I shrugged, trying to keep my cool. 'Not a big one.'

'You think you should have won?'

'I don't know who should have won,' I said. 'The snitch should have been disallowed and the match contested on rings.'

She glared at me. 'I'm sorry you feel like that,' she said, not sounding sorry at all. 'If that's what you think, you're history. I don't want to see you again.'

'You'll have to,' I said, though at that moment I didn't want to see her either. 'At the DA, remember?'

'I don't want to see you at the DA,' she shouted.

That really hurt. I took a step back, almost trembling with anger. 'Then you can keep your bloody DA,' I snarled back at her. I fished the galleon out of my pocket and hurled it at her as she stormed off. It was childish, but deeply satisfying as it hit her in exactly the same place as the Bludger had hit Cho.

I stood where I was for a moment, trying to get my breath back. Trying to get my limbs back under control. Then I turned to go back to the Common Room and walked into the one person that I did not want to see just then.

'Hi, Mike,' said Cho. 'Are you alright?'

'I'm fine,' I said automatically. 'How are you?'

'Well, you know,' she shrugged. 'It'll pass.'

I had a stab of guilt; she was talking about losing the match.

'She cheated,' I said. 'Everyone knows you should have got it.'

'But I didn't,' she said. 'And that's what the results show.' She shrugged again. 'You've split up with her, haven't you?'

'Just now,' I said. 'Damn. I've just realised.' I sighed. 'I've got to get my galleon.'

'What happened to it?'

'I threw it at her,' I said. 'It bounced off her. Heavens knows where it is now.'

'Surely there won't be any more meetings,' she said. 'Not after the raid. Not after what Hermione did to Marietta.'

'Probably not,' I said. 'But don't want it lying around.'

'I'll come and help you look,' she said. 'It'll come to _Accio_.'

Either Hermione had charmed them to resist _Accio_ or some house elf had tidied it away, but there was no sign of the galleon.

'What a pair we are,' she said as we made our way back to the Common Room. 'I've split up with Harry, too.'

'I don't think inter-house relationships work,' I said. 'Not when Quidditch is involved.' But I did feel better by the time we reached Muriel's door.

'How come she just opens for you?' asked Cho.

There was the tiniest cough from Muriel.

'Long story,*' I said.

*See Michael Corner and The Really Annoying Bird's Head


End file.
